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I believe it is vital now for readers to make a serious study of the American Revolution and especially of the life and political positions of Thomas Paine who wrote Common Sense and The Rights of Man.

As part of that I have found this survey of a book on an Amazon site which at least allows us to dip our toes into the water, rather tentatively.

The book in question is “Thomas Paine and the Promise of America” by author Harvey J. Kaye

The astonishing revolution that brought forth the American republic seems an unending source of curiosity; in the past year there has been one book after another about the American Revolution itself or about the Founding Fathers who eventually brought a Constitution to cap the Revolution’s success. Perhaps we will never tire of examining the start of our nation. Perhaps, as Tom Paine himself wrote, even now “It is yet too soon to write the history of the Revolution.” Paine himself has been written out of the Revolution many times by those who could not stand his political or religious principles, but as Harvey J. Kaye shows in _Thomas Paine and the Promise of America_ (Hill and Wang), Paine’s authentically radical voice was not only an essential spark to unite the colonists against Britain, but also provided a legacy of inspiration to reformers in the succeeding two centuries.

Kaye’s book encompasses two parts, one a brisk biography of Paine, and then a biography of Paine’s posthumous life within American history and ideas. It was only in 1774 that Paine, upon the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin, crossed the Atlantic to Philadelphia. He was 38 years old, and quickly became a journal editor. He wrote _Common Sense_ anonymously, exhorting his countrymen not only to independence, but to republicanism. He formulated his arguments so that everyone could understand them, and everyone did; _Common Sense_ united and inspired the colonists to a new American cause. He became involved in politics again in France with the storming of the Bastille. He wrote _The Rights of Man_ which exhorted both Frenchmen and Americans to ensure revolutions so complete that slavery would be ended, women would be equals, peace would be enforced by a global union of republics, and church and state would be completely separated. _The Age of Reason_ was his assault on scripture and organized religion as mythologies imposed on humanity by clerics “to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” He scorned the Bible for its cruelty and its lack of morality, leading antagonists for centuries to berate Paine as an atheist. He was, however, like many of the most famous of the founders, a deist, but he was one who put into book form his distrust of the general religion of his society.

The religious controversy has continued and has been kept alive both by the freethinkers who have claimed Paine as their own and by Christians who not content with hating the facts of Paine’s life made up scurrilous lying biographies about him and false legends such as the one about his deathbed recantation of his disbelief. Teddy Roosevelt called him a “filthy little atheist”, but he was none of those three. His lack of conventional religious belief has colored how his countrymen have perceived him ever since. Mark Twain and Herman Melville admired him; Lincoln avidly read _The Age of Reason_ and may well have written a deist treatise of his own, but his friends ensured no one else ever saw it. Franklin Roosevelt was the first president since Jefferson to quote Paine by name, in a wartime radio address that included Paine’s famous “These are the times that try men’s souls” passage. Even President Reagan in his turn was able to quote Paine, but the radicals on the left are the ones who always admired Paine’s convictions. A key story here is about the communist Howard Fast, who in 1943 published the historical novel _Citizen Tom Paine_. Paine was thus drawn into the witch hunts, and when Fast was summoned before Congress and refused to name names, he was put into jail in 1950. His book was removed from the public school libraries of New York City, and J. Edgar Hoover sent agents to major libraries instructing them to remove and destroy Fast’s works. It was the sort of oppression Paine would have recognized and abhorred. Kaye’s book successfully charts the development of Paine’s ideas during his life, and the utility and appropriations of his ideas even into our own times.

“Kaye [demonstrates] how much the resurrection of Paine could still do for America’s flagging radical imagination.” — Todd Gitlin

“Kaye rediscovers Thomas Paine’s central place in an American radical tradition and reminds us how Paine’s words still resonate today.” — Eric Foner, Columbia University

“Nearly as lively and feisty as its subject. Readers of all political persuasions will find this book of compelling interest.” — Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Chair of Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America

“Readers of all political persuasions will find this book compelling, and will find it harder henceforth to deny Paine’s importance.” — Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Chair of Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America.

“Stirs the heart, moves the mind and routs the demon of despair. The best political book of the year!” — Bill Moyers

“[Kaye] demonstrates how much the resurrection of Paine could still do for America’s flagging radical imagination.” — Todd Gitlin, author of The Intellectuals and the Flag

Review

“The moment I finished this book (at four in the morning) I couldn’t wait to call Harvey Kaye and leave a message that I was suing him for inducing insomnia. I couldn’t put the thing down! The story of Thomas Paine–then and now, for the man and his ideas are very much alive today–stirs the heart, moves the mind and routs the demon of despair. The best political book of the year!” –Bill Moyers

“Thomas Paine has at last found a worthy defender in Harvey Kaye, a gifted historian whose account of Paine is nearly as lively and feisty as its subject. Readers of all political persuasions will find this book of compelling interest, and will find it much harder henceforth to deny Paine’s importance–not only in his own time, but in the entire sweep of American history.” –Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Chair of Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America

“If the rights of man are to be upheld in a dark time, we shall require an age of reason. Harvey Kaye’s lucid work helps create the free citizen’s memorial to Thomas Paine, who is still shamefully unacknowledged by the democratic republic that he lived and died to bring about.” –Christopher Hitchens

“For two centuries, Americans have fought for possession of Tom Paine’s soul at least as vigorously as our ancestors fought over his literal bones. Harvey Kaye tells the tale well, and a revelatory tale it is. Along the way, he demonstrates how much, in this time that tries men’s and women’s souls, the resurrection of Paine could still do for America’s flagging radical imagination.” –Todd Gitlin, author of The Intellectuals and the Flag

“In this stunning portrait of Tom Paine and his legacy across the political spectrum, Harvey J. Kaye recovers ‘common sense’ for our own time. This is a major contribution to understanding the American promise of freedom, equality, and the revolutionary tradition.” –Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Women’s Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

“In this fascinating study, Harvey Kaye rediscovers Thomas Paine’s central place in an American radical tradition stretching from the Revolution to the present, and reminds us how Paine’s words still resonate in American society today.” –Eric Foner, Columbia University

“Harvey Kaye provides a radical eighteenth-century founder for Americans in the Twenty-First Century. Moreover, Kaye convincingly shows that for two hundred years Americans have not only constantly read and quoted Tom Paine, but also, in their repeated invocations of him, kept the radicalism of their great political experiment forever alive.” –Isaac Kramnick, Professor of Government at Cornell University

“Harvey J. Kaye has given us the Tom Paine that Americans urgently need, a fearless, rabble-rousing radical who hugely advanced the cause of freedom. Scrupulously researched, wonderfully written, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America is a book that has found its time.” –Paul Buhle, Brown University and co-editor, The Encyclopedia of the American Left

Product Description
America’s unfinished revolutionThe revolutionary spirit that runs through American history and whose founding father and greatest advocate was Thomas Paine is fiercely traced in Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. Showing how Paine turned Americans into radicals–and how we have remained radicals at heart ever since–Harvey J. Kaye presents the nation’s democratic story with wit, subtlety, and, above all, passion.

Paine was one of the most remarkable political writers of the modern world and the greatest radical of a radical age. Through writings like Common Sense–and words such as “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth,” “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” and “These are the times that try men’s souls”–he not only turned America’s colonial rebellion into a revolutionary war but, as Kaye demonstrates, articulated an American identity charged with exceptional purpose and promise.

Beginning with Paine’s life and ideas and following their vigorous influence through to our own day, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America reveals how, while the powers that be repeatedly sought to suppress, defame, and most recently co-opt Paine’s memory, generations of radical and liberal Americans turned to Paine for inspiration as they endeavored to expand American freedom, equality, and democracy.

From the Inside Flap
The revolutionary spirit that runs throughout American history and whose founding father and greatest advocate was Thomas Paine is fiercely traced in THOMAS PAINE AND THE PROMISE OF AMERICA. Showing how Paine turned Americans into radicals—and how we have remained radicals at heart ever since—Harvey J. Kaye presents the nation’s democratic story with wit, subtlety, and, above all, passion.

Paine was one of the most remarkable political writers of the modern world and the greatest radical of a radical age. Through writings like Common Sense—and words such as “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth, ” “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” and “These are the times that try men’s souls”—he not only turned America’s colonial rebellion into a revolutionary war but, as Kaye demonstrates, articulated an American identity charged with exceptional purpose and promise.

Beginning with Paine’s life and ideas and following their vigorous influence through to our own day, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America reveals how, while the powers that be repeatedly sought to suppress, defame, and most recently co-opt Paine’s memory, generations of radical and liberal Americans turned to Paine for inspiration as they endeavored to expand American freedom, equality, and democracy.

About the Author
Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Social Change and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay . An award-winning author and editor, his numerous books include Are We Good Citizens? and The American Radical.

FINAL POINT

I have a strong feeling that Paine is most important in the present situation where Obama following on from Bush is making an alliance with reactionary Islam, also the Vatican is thrown into the mix, and that this will be the guts of the so called “New World order”, a word that conjures up conspiracy nuts by the zillion. By the way these conspiracy nuts always lead back to blaming everything on the Jews, in our epoch this means on Israel. These conspiracy nuts thus bring in all kinds of subjects like Nostradamus and essentially their job is to keep people from understanding reality. What it all calls to my mind is the mad monk Rasputin who became the “spiritual” advisor of the Empress in the months leading up to October 1917.

On a different level I also think that Paine was probable taken up by Stalinists and fake socialists. But the truth will not be there.

Anyway if readers can do any reading on Paine I feel it is worth while.

No sooner was it announced that Iran had been hiding a Nuclear Bomb Making operation in a mountain in Iran than the bullshit on the so called Left in Europe started.

Such idiots as Stephen Ritson announced that iran was in the right all along. Meanwhile the somewhat demented Scottish Steve Gilmore announced to listeners in Europe that “The Chinese buggers need to be watched”

(Statement by Gilmore last night September 30 at about 8.30 pm on Radio Talk Europe)

The Iranian bomb situation was explained on this comment to the main article on JW

“The ball is in the Iranians’ court”…

The ball has always been in Iran’s court…It’s their game, they make up the rules…This will continue until someone takes the ball away from them…It won’t be Rasool Obama, maybe Israel…

Surprise!

Western powers give

Iran its next deadline

to come clean

on nuke program

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – Albert Einstein

Deadlines are a convenient, renewable resource in foreign policy. They give the appearance that action is being taken, and they buy time before having to do something more substantial. The problem is, they buy Iran time as well.

An update on this story. “West gives Iran three months to prove it does not want nuclear weapons,” by Nick Meo and Richard Spencer for the Telegraph, September 30:

Thursday’s meeting in Geneva between Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and western governments will be the last chance to come to a settlement over the programme, diplomats said yesterday. If not, western governments would seek tough new sanctions at the United Nations.

“The ball is in the Iranians’ court,” said one source. “What they do in Geneva will be a fundamental test for the Iranians.”

The meeting is the first of its kind for more than a year and the first with Iran at which Washington will be a full partner for three decades. It follows last week’s revelation that the Iranians were developing a secret uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom.

That disclosure may have rattled the Iranian government, but its president was in bellicose mood yesterday in setting out his terms for the meeting.

He said it was the West, not Iran, which had the opportunity to show it had changed its attitudes.

“The leaders of these countries made a historic mistake with their comments about the new plant,” he said. “The negotiators can definitely adopt any policy that they want, but we will not be harmed.”

The West’s negotiating team, led by the European Union’s foreign policy representative Javier Solana, is hoping that the hardline bluster is preparing the way politically for a more conciliatory approach face-to-face.

They say do not know whether Iran wants to cut a deal or not.

“The key thing is, by the second half of the day, is there any sense of whether they are in a frame of mind where they want to engage?” the source said. “We are offering a process of co-operation with Iran – on economic issues, energy, even things like education.”

Close attention will be paid to the reaction from Russia and China, which have the power to veto any proposed sanctions.

Russia reacted critically to the disclosure of Iran’s latest secret programme, but China has shown no willingness to shift from its previous opposition to more sanctions.

The West’s general stance received some backing from Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The West claims that the secret construction of the new facility was in violation of Iran’s commitments, but Tehran says it was not obliged to inform the IAEA until six months before it introduced nuclear material.

But Mr ElBaradei told a television interviewer: “They have been on the wrong side of the law in so far as informing the agency about the construction.

“Iran was supposed to inform us on the day it was decided to construct the facility. They have not done that.”

Posted by Marisol on September 30, 2009

Surprise! Western powers give Iran its next deadline to come clean on nuke program

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – Albert Einstein

Deadlines are a convenient, renewable resource in foreign policy. They give the appearance that action is being taken, and they buy time before having to do something more substantial. The problem is, they buy Iran time as well.

An update on this story. “West gives Iran three months to prove it does not want nuclear weapons,” by Nick Meo and Richard Spencer for the Telegraph, September 30:

Thursday’s meeting in Geneva between Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and western governments will be the last chance to come to a settlement over the programme, diplomats said yesterday. If not, western governments would seek tough new sanctions at the United Nations.

“The ball is in the Iranians’ court,” said one source. “What they do in Geneva will be a fundamental test for the Iranians.”

The meeting is the first of its kind for more than a year and the first with Iran at which Washington will be a full partner for three decades. It follows last week’s revelation that the Iranians were developing a secret uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom.

That disclosure may have rattled the Iranian government, but its president was in bellicose mood yesterday in setting out his terms for the meeting.

He said it was the West, not Iran, which had the opportunity to show it had changed its attitudes.

“The leaders of these countries made a historic mistake with their comments about the new plant,” he said. “The negotiators can definitely adopt any policy that they want, but we will not be harmed.”

The West’s negotiating team, led by the European Union’s foreign policy representative Javier Solana, is hoping that the hardline bluster is preparing the way politically for a more conciliatory approach face-to-face.

They say do not know whether Iran wants to cut a deal or not.

“The key thing is, by the second half of the day, is there any sense of whether they are in a frame of mind where they want to engage?” the source said. “We are offering a process of co-operation with Iran – on economic issues, energy, even things like education.”

Close attention will be paid to the reaction from Russia and China, which have the power to veto any proposed sanctions.

Russia reacted critically to the disclosure of Iran’s latest secret programme, but China has shown no willingness to shift from its previous opposition to more sanctions.

The West’s general stance received some backing from Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The West claims that the secret construction of the new facility was in violation of Iran’s commitments, but Tehran says it was not obliged to inform the IAEA until six months before it introduced nuclear material.

But Mr ElBaradei told a television interviewer: “They have been on the wrong side of the law in so far as informing the agency about the construction.

“Iran was supposed to inform us on the day it was decided to construct the facility. They have not done that.”

4. Uncharacteristically – (we thought 3. would have clinched it for you at the UN) – get turned down for the position because of anti-Semitic remarks

5. Blame the Jooooooooz.

The article is by Robert and deals with the level of antisemitism in Egypt and the strange fact that Israel made a “Peace” with Egypt turning over the vast area of Sinai. But they did not find peace through that deal.

[begin Jihadwatch analysis here]

Egypt has a peace accord with Israel and is supposed to be discouraging antisemitism within the country. But the Farouk Hosny bid to become chief of UNESCO reveals just how spectacularly Egypt has failed to live up to that commitment. And that, of course, is not surprising, given the deep Koranic roots of Islamic antisemitism. But that is something no one is supposed to notice. More on this story. “Egypt Ponders Failed Drive for Unesco,” by Michael Slackman for the New York Times, September 29:

CAIRO — For days after Egypt’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, failed in his bid to lead the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Egyptian newspapers and government officials presented the defeat as a sign of Western prejudice against Islam and the Arab world, the product of an international Jewish conspiracy.

“America, Europe and the Jewish lobby brought down Farouk Hosni,” read a headline in an independent daily newspaper, Al Masry Al Yom. The foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, criticized “international Judaism and Western powers” in a television interview. Mr. Hosny himself helped stoke those sentiments, saying, “There was a group of the world’s Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position.”

All of Egypt, indeed all of the Arab world, was talking with one voice of outrage and insult.

Or so it seemed….

The defeat provoked a degree of quiet soul-searching here. The state’s retreat to anti-Zionism and to some extent, anti-Semitism, underscored for many here the region’s collective political impotence, a failure of Arab leaders to form a powerful regional bloc capable of winning support from power brokers in Washington, London or Paris that has lasted decades.

The pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi wrote that Mr. Hosny’s loss “comes as yet another confirmation of the Arab world’s — and Egypt’s in particular — backslide on the international arena, and the general lack of respect towards it in all areas, not exclusively culture.”

Mr. Hosny, 71, is a well-known figure in Egypt. He has been the minister for more than two decades. Oddly enough, considering the charges of anti-Semitism that derailed his candidacy, he has never been known as a strong opponent of normalizing ties with Israel.

True, he has resisted a warm peace, refused to visit Tel Aviv and was quoted as saying that he would burn Israeli books if he found them in a library. But proponents say he took these actions as the bare minimum to defend himself from a population that views Israel as the enemy.

Throughout his candidacy, Mr. Hosny struggled to mute the charges of anti-Semitism, efforts that caused many people in Egypt to wince as they watched a stalwart of the state apologize, to Israel no less. And they winced again, when he blamed a Jewish-Zionist conspiracy for his loss.

“He did not take an anti-normalization stand until the end,” said Hossam el-Hamalawy, an independent Egyptian blogger and journalist. “The moment he lost he came back and started saying some of the most foul anti-Semitic statements against the Jews, confirming what the West had said about him.”

Mr. Hosny lost his bid for Unesco, but tried to turn that into a victory at home, returning as a victim, and for the state-run media a hero. The charges of a Western, Jewish-Zionist conspiracy may have been amplified by a government eager to limit its embarrassment after having staked its credibility on Mr. Hosny.

But they are not new, said Hala Mustafa, editor in chief of the weekly magazine Democracy and a member of Mr. Mubarak’s governing party. When it comes to domestic politics, she said, Egyptian officials often try to present themselves as anti-Israeli, even while serving as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

Ms. Mustafa has been squeezed by that dual identity.

In her capacity as an editor and academic in the state-financed Ahram Center, she recently met with Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, Shalom Cohen. She has since been tarred in the press as a “normalizer,” and the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate has tried to blacklist her. Ms. Mustafa said she saw the state’s rush to blame Israel for Mr. Hosny’s loss as stemming from the same forces busy attacking her.

“We have been under this propaganda for 30 years,” she said. “Like Egypt doesn’t have a peace treaty with Israel? Like Egypt does not play a peace role between Israel and the Palestinians? If that is Egypt’s role, why are we not allowed to play the same role?”

There is another view, too, one that was published in English, allowing, perhaps for a degree of candor not found in the Arabic news media. Writing in the English-language Daily News, the chief editor, Rania al-Malky, suggested that Mr. Hosny might have done as well as he did because he was Arab and Muslim, not because he was qualified. His defeat, she wrote, should not surprise anyone.

“I will say this at the risk of being branded unpatriotic, but no matter where you stand on the political spectrum,” she wrote, “you must admit that the Egyptian administration did not deserve to win this bid. How can a 22-year minister of a country where culture, education, health and science have regressed to the Dark Ages become the head of Unesco?”

Egypt has a peace accord with Israel and is supposed to be discouraging antisemitism within the country. But the Farouk Hosny bid to become chief of UNESCO reveals just how spectacularly Egypt has failed to live up to that commitment. And that, of course, is not surprising, given the deep Koranic roots of Islamic antisemitism. But that is something no one is supposed to notice. More on this story. “Egypt Ponders Failed Drive for Unesco,” by Michael Slackman for the New York Times, September 29:

CAIRO — For days after Egypt’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, failed in his bid to lead the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Egyptian newspapers and government officials presented the defeat as a sign of Western prejudice against Islam and the Arab world, the product of an international Jewish conspiracy.

“America, Europe and the Jewish lobby brought down Farouk Hosni,” read a headline in an independent daily newspaper, Al Masry Al Yom. The foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, criticized “international Judaism and Western powers” in a television interview. Mr. Hosny himself helped stoke those sentiments, saying, “There was a group of the world’s Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position.”

All of Egypt, indeed all of the Arab world, was talking with one voice of outrage and insult.

Or so it seemed….

The defeat provoked a degree of quiet soul-searching here. The state’s retreat to anti-Zionism and to some extent, anti-Semitism, underscored for many here the region’s collective political impotence, a failure of Arab leaders to form a powerful regional bloc capable of winning support from power brokers in Washington, London or Paris that has lasted decades.

The pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi wrote that Mr. Hosny’s loss “comes as yet another confirmation of the Arab world’s — and Egypt’s in particular — backslide on the international arena, and the general lack of respect towards it in all areas, not exclusively culture.”

Mr. Hosny, 71, is a well-known figure in Egypt. He has been the minister for more than two decades. Oddly enough, considering the charges of anti-Semitism that derailed his candidacy, he has never been known as a strong opponent of normalizing ties with Israel.

True, he has resisted a warm peace, refused to visit Tel Aviv and was quoted as saying that he would burn Israeli books if he found them in a library. But proponents say he took these actions as the bare minimum to defend himself from a population that views Israel as the enemy.

Throughout his candidacy, Mr. Hosny struggled to mute the charges of anti-Semitism, efforts that caused many people in Egypt to wince as they watched a stalwart of the state apologize, to Israel no less. And they winced again, when he blamed a Jewish-Zionist conspiracy for his loss.

“He did not take an anti-normalization stand until the end,” said Hossam el-Hamalawy, an independent Egyptian blogger and journalist. “The moment he lost he came back and started saying some of the most foul anti-Semitic statements against the Jews, confirming what the West had said about him.”

Mr. Hosny lost his bid for Unesco, but tried to turn that into a victory at home, returning as a victim, and for the state-run media a hero. The charges of a Western, Jewish-Zionist conspiracy may have been amplified by a government eager to limit its embarrassment after having staked its credibility on Mr. Hosny.

But they are not new, said Hala Mustafa, editor in chief of the weekly magazine Democracy and a member of Mr. Mubarak’s governing party. When it comes to domestic politics, she said, Egyptian officials often try to present themselves as anti-Israeli, even while serving as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

Ms. Mustafa has been squeezed by that dual identity.

In her capacity as an editor and academic in the state-financed Ahram Center, she recently met with Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, Shalom Cohen. She has since been tarred in the press as a “normalizer,” and the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate has tried to blacklist her. Ms. Mustafa said she saw the state’s rush to blame Israel for Mr. Hosny’s loss as stemming from the same forces busy attacking her.

“We have been under this propaganda for 30 years,” she said. “Like Egypt doesn’t have a peace treaty with Israel? Like Egypt does not play a peace role between Israel and the Palestinians? If that is Egypt’s role, why are we not allowed to play the same role?”

There is another view, too, one that was published in English, allowing, perhaps for a degree of candor not found in the Arabic news media. Writing in the English-language Daily News, the chief editor, Rania al-Malky, suggested that Mr. Hosny might have done as well as he did because he was Arab and Muslim, not because he was qualified. His defeat, she wrote, should not surprise anyone.

“I will say this at the risk of being branded unpatriotic, but no matter where you stand on the political spectrum,” she wrote, “you must admit that the Egyptian administration did not deserve to win this bid. How can a 22-year minister of a country where culture, education, health and science have regressed to the Dark Ages become the head of Unesco?”

We do not like to say it, nobody if sane wants war, but we are fast approaching a Chechoslovakia moment.

Basically as we have said here for many months the Israeli state and nation, the nation of the Jews butchered by other Nazis, has simply got no alternative no matter how it dislikes the idea but to strike against the Iranian nuclear bomb threat.

If it does nothing it will be destroyed.

In this sense the Iranian Islam Fascists are worse than Hitler because the power of destruction of Jewish people is far worse than what the Nazis had in their hands.

The second reason that they are worse is because of the American Governments who since 1948 have been in league with Islam.

This is why the American CIA recruited the German Nazis and then along with the British sent them into Palestine in 1947 to stop the Jews setting up Israel.

Basically the situation is today as it was then. The main destroyers of jews is US, EU in alliance with Islam

NOTHING HAS CHANGED!

There is of course no way that Obama will stop Iran, but he will seek to stop by every means at his disposal the Israel air force defeating trhe Mulllahs

The whole situation could rightly be called “water off a ducks back”

The Iranians know their man, and his name is Obama.

Sanctions are a joke. The reactionary Stalinists who run China and Russia are so into trade with Iran and Chavez etc that they will block any sanctions and Israel be damned. This is also the position of Europeans, I know the Irish and Spanish best in this, but they are all alike in Europe, the Germans in particular having extensive trade witht he Mullahs.

The whole issue of thje killing of millions of Jews by the Mullahs is now tied in with mundane trade deals. Capitalism is what it is all about. What it was always all about.

The Allied air planes overflew the railway lines bring Jews to the ovens and refused to bomb them because Jews were not really that important…only trade and capitalism was.

It is the same today as this feature from DEBKAfile makes clear

[begin feature by Debka here]

Maestro Barack Obama’s histrionics in New York and Pittsburgh Thursday and Friday, Sept. 24-25 – and his threat of “confrontation” for Iran’s concealment of its nuclear capabilities – were water off a duck’s back for Tehran, whose nuclear weapons program has gone too far to stop by words or even sanctions.

The Islamic regime only responded with more defiance, announcing that its second uranium enrichment plant near Qom would become operational soon.

The US president’s tough words and willingness to step out of his axiomatic insistence on dialogue and turn to economic warfare against Iran may be impressive but it is no longer effective. Tehran is too close to its goal of a nuclear weapons capability to be deterred by offers of engagement or economic penalties.

Obama certainly knows this. He also understands that Iran is now unstoppable except by force. His performance was therefore directed at another target: Israel, whom he is determined to dissuade from resorting to military action against Iran’s nuclear installations.

Defense secretary Robert Gates hit the nail on the head when he said Friday: “The reality is there is no military option that does anything more than buy time. The estimates are one to three years or so.”

Iran was allowed to reach the point defined by Gates thanks to the permissiveness of two US presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and two Israeli prime ministers, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. They had no illusions about the deterrent value of the three sets of UN Security sanctions imposed to punish Iran, but held back from pre-emptive action on the pretext that there was still plenty of time before Iran was in a position to destroy Israel.

In any case, Israeli leaders argued, Iran’s nuclear ambitions were a threat to the whole world and it was therefore incumbent on the “international community” to take care of them.

This of course did not happen. Iran carried on exploiting international inaction, finally capitalizing on Obama’s foot-dragging in his first nine months in office.

By now, Iran has used the gift of time to process enough enriched uranium to fuel two nuclear bombs and is able to produce another two per year.

Its advanced medium-range missiles will be ready to deliver nuclear warheads by next year.

Detonators for nuclear bombs are in production at two secret sites.

And finally, a second secret uranium enrichment plant – subject of the stern warning issued collectively in Pittsburgh Friday by Obama, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and British premier Gordon Brown – has come to light, buried under a mountain near Qom. Its discovery doubles – at least – all previous estimates of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Caught red-handed yet again in massive deceit, the Iranian president Mahdmoud Ahmadinejad had only more defiance to offer. America owes his government an apology, he told interviewers in New York Friday, because the new plant would not be operational for 18 months, and Tehran had therefore not violated International Atomic Energy Agency rules requiring notification.

He was soon caught in another lie.

Saturday, the Iranian news agency was informed by an aide of supreme leader Ali Khamenei that “the new plant would become operational soon.”

Iran’s published concealments and deceptions are disquieting enough. But a whole lot more are undoubtedly buried in fat intelligence dossiers on Iran’s nuclear program – plutonium production, for instance. The progress made in its plutonium-based weapons program was never mentioned in the stern condemnations of the last few days, except indirectly in a quiet comment from an anonymous Israeli official Friday night.

He said Iran operates on two hourglasses and both were running out fast. He was referring obliquely to the enriched uranium and the plutonium tracks.

Sarkozy was clearly thinking about those undiscovered Iranian secrets and evasions when he declared in Pittsburgh:

“Everything – everything must be put on the table now” (at the October 1 meeting of the Six Powers with Iranian negotiators). Obama too urged Iran “to come clean.”

All the powers concerned – the US, Russia, France, Germany the UK and even China – have the same information as Israel and are fully aware that Iran has already crossed a number of red lines this year and will cross more in 2010. The more time allowed for diplomacy and engagement, the greater Tehran’s defiance. Meanwhile, world powers will argue – not over futile sanctions, but on how to stop Israel, so wasting several more months.

DEBKAfile‘s sources note that the Gates assessment and the cooling note he injected into the US president’s oratory came after Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak visited the Pentagon. The visit clearly did not change Gates’ view that the Iranian nuclear program was now too advanced to stop, while the use of force would only gain an interval of up to three years, after which Tehran would pick itself up and start again. Therefore, according to Gates, diplomacy remained the only viable option.

The answer to this argument is simple: It is exactly this approach which gave Iran 11 quiet years to develop its weapons capacity. For Israel and Middle East, a three-year setback is a very long time, a security boon worth great risk, because a) It would be a happy respite from the dark clouds hanging over the country from Iran and also cut back Hamas and Hizballah terrorist capabilities, and b) In the volatile Middle East anything can happen in 36 months.

But the US defense secretary believes Israel, like the rest of the world, must accept life under the shadow of a nuclear-armed Iran and make the best of it.

This view is shared by the Kremlin. It was advanced by prime minister Vladimir Putin to Binyamin Netanyahu during his secret trip to Moscow on Sept. 7.

According to DEBKAfile‘s Russian sources, when the Israeli prime minister tried to counter Putin’s thesis and explain what restraint meant for Israel, the Russian prime minster became impatient and told his guest to leave.

After that interview, the Israeli government can no longer avoid appreciating that Gates and Putin talk the real talk for Washington and Moscow, while their leaders’ moralistic condemnations of Iran are mainly hot air for public consumption and for maneuvering Israel into a position where a military strike would be hard to conceive.

Netanyahu’s Sphinx-like silence on the nuclear to-do in the US this week was apt. But it is hard to tell what he is hiding. Will he succumb to the world powers’ pressure to sit tight while Iran goes all the way to a military nuclear capability – or face up to it and act?

This is the most important decision of Netanyahu’s political life as two-time prime minister of Israel. It will also determine Israel’s future.